Joe Stalin Made Me Rich, But I'm Really A Free Market Patriot
Posted September 23, 2010 in Curbing Pollution, Health and the Environment
A recent editorial in Investor’s Business Daily claims there is a “Great War on Koch Industries.” The editorial notes that “The private Wichita, Kan.-based conglomerate, which operates ranches, drills oil, runs pulp and paper mills, and creates specialized textiles for athletes, among other activities, is owned by two brothers, David and Charles, who openly fund free-market causes.”
Actually, the brothers are far from open about their support of free market causes, as Jane Mayer expertly and minutely details in a recent New Yorker piece. In fact Mayer’s expose, and an ensuing New York Times Op-Ed by Frank Rich, ‘outed’ Manhattan resident David Koch in particular, a man who is usually seen in the social pages and lauded for his $100 million dollar gifts to New York cultural institutions. One or two less dinner invitations these days for poor David.
Oh, and then there's Joseph Stalin. He's well known, but that fact that the Koch family fortune was created by Stalin's rubles isn't. Charles and David's father, Fred Koch, built at least 15 oil refineries and taught Bolshevik engineers his method of converting oil to gasoline, all for that Democratic, free-market champion Joseph Stalin. However the Russian profit-gusher dried up when Stalin ordered the brutal murder of some of Koch’s managers.
Fred Koch also was an original member of the John Birch Society, and disparager of the civil rights movement, who once said welfare “was a secret plot to attract rural blacks to cities, where they would foment “a vicious race war.”
Charles and David Koch, as Mayer points out, are perhaps the biggest funders of right-wing think tanks and Astroturf groups in the United States. She quotes one long-time observer of the Washington scene, Charles Lewis, who founded the non-partisan watchdog group the Center for Public Integrity:
“The Koch's are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
That behavior is detailed in a recent Greenpeace report, cited by Mayer in The New Yorker article.
A subsequent New York Observer story, '7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare,' illustrates how the brothers are actually not so anti-government. In fact, they really like government intervention as long as it is bent to serve their business interests. And their business interests are doing just fine: according to the most recent Forbes 400 list, David Koch just passed Michael Bloomberg to become New York's richest man and the sixth richest American over all, worth $21.5 billion.
Joe Stalin would be proud.
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Comments
Barbara Williams — Sep 24 2010 08:38 PM
"HOOK LINE AND SINK US
The entire human race, especially governments and faceless corporations, need to stop and think for once! What are "We" doing to ALL living things on this planet? Madness fueled by gr$$d and ignorance has taken over any semblance of common sense. Why are "We"wantonly taking life from all manner of living things?
Humans being poisoned from chemicals, drugs, contaminated foods. Animals slaughtered like there's no tomorrow! The seas unfit for the mammals and other life forms. Water supplies contaminated! The air "We" breath, suspect!!!??
More frightening are the killing fields we have created in other countries, like Iraq, et al..When do "We" STOP this madness understanding that soon the only living being left, except for the very rich living high off the hog, will be US who will suffer under the devastation of what corporate gr$$d and lust for empire are leaving in their wake! Future generations are doomed by this God awful folly of power brokers, who, so far, are getting away with this madness..
Don't be fooled by what the Republican party, et al, say when they pretend that future generations will suffer if "We" American's have a health care plan, without the insurer, or don't re-up the Bush handout to the top 2% of the most wealthy; Like BP of the Gulf Oil Leak Fame, Bechtel, who caused some serious problems while in Iraq, the Brothers Koch, whose fortune was built in Russia,. And who fight against any environmental changes.
Halliburton, who kept poor records on spending. Seems they lost 100 million, somewhere, which was allocated by our government to feed our soldiers early into the war with Iraq. And the beat goes on, and on, and on, and on!
Future generations WILL suffer, as are their relatives today, from the loss of bio diversity. If "We" continue allowing our legislative body to table environmental and other dire issues, serving Corporate madness, "We" THE PEOPLE WILL reap what THEY have sown! America's Shame is growing by leaps and bounds!
Madness has taken over this nation and does not come from one party's failure alone!
This madness is also fueled by some AMERICAN'S who have not learned any lessons from the past, nor how to put petty differences aside. Legislators no longer serve the least of these! Though their salaries are still paid from the tax's of the least of these. Most leaders sold out to the company store, "HOOK LINE AND SINK US", years ago...
The Prejudice of some of America's own IS the epitome of PURE "UN-CHRISTIAN ignorance! Prejudice alone, in my opinion, will take this nation, built by immigrants, into the abyss! Unless we put prejudice behind US, It will be the stumbling block before US! So far "We" seem doomed to FALL FROM WITHIN. How sad to have come so far, yet be far behind when it comes to WISDOM!
Barbara/founder/dtdn
www.DareToDreamNetwork.net
c/o founder
www.TheBridgeToNowhere.org
Read: Joe Stalin Made Me Rich, But I'm Really A Free Market Patriot http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/tspencer/joe_stalin_made_me_rich_but_im.html
Chip Campbell — Sep 29 2010 02:25 AM
This most biased article disguised as news is simply @#$@#!